Thursday, November 19, 2009

Week #42 The James Hughes Call Show - Performance Piece

For the past ten years or so I’ve been promoting and producing the music of James Call. Either in the guise of the Missing Teens, German Cars Vs. American Homes, James Call Erotic Photo Hunt or just plane James Call, I’ve booked show for him, produced albums & done pretty much every promotion thing I could think of.

Recently it occurred to me that maybe we’ve been going at the wrong way. Maybe James isn’t a rock star, maybe he’s a performance artist.

I’ve loved James’ recordings for years but what’s always really sold him is his performances. Nearly everyone who’s ever seen him has loved him and recently his performances have become a truly ecstatic experience. They’ve also become more and more conceptual.

My idea, which I’ve been running by James every time I see him recently, is to have James perform with semi-scripted banter between his songs. We’d bill him as a sort of musical motivational speaker and he’d perform every weekend for three or four weeks like a play. He’s be aided by video, a power point presentation and maybe even celebrity guests.

James of coarse would have to do most of the writing (hopefully aided by at least one of the Greg Travis’) so the content would really be up to him. I figure we could have either a band or pre-recorded music or a little of both.

Obviously this was all reliant on James but if we could pull it off I’d be totally down to produce it here in San Francisco and maybe in New York possibly even in connection in some way with Sleepwalkers Theatre.

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